Local SEO – Ultimate Guide For 2021

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Local SEO in 2020 [Ultimate Guide]

Local marketing of your business is a vital part of every business, and there can be no other place more interesting than the web to work on such ideas.

Moreover, if you need to be the best hunt of Google’s core algorithm like Pigeon, it is necessary to work on advanced SEO tactics.

A Perfect local SEO strategy includes the best of both worlds, i.e. effective On-page and Off-page optimisation.

Therefore, if you need your website to be the most engaging platform for users to engage in particular services, we bring you a foolproof guide to help you with local SEO in 2021.

But before we move further to explore all the necessary insights that you need to keep in mind for a firm local SEO grip, let us explore some of the factors that can help you sustain a significant position in local area results.

  • Customer Reviews:  a great way to help Google get your business on the list of top-rated service providers in an area is to have positive reviews and feedback from the customers.
  • GMB: make sure you have a well organised and adequately filled google my business page that can provide the real category and business information to Google and local searchers.  
  • Keywords Selection: your selection of keywords heavily influence your business ranking on search engines. For long term goals, try to use keywords effectively in the title, header tags, meta tags, and domain name (if possible).  
  • NAP Consistency: if you want your business to stay at the top of searches for people looking for local business, make sure you never take NAP consistency for granted.  
  • Proximity: When you are on your way to establishing a GMB, make sure you always understand the area you will be serving. This factor could heavily affect your ranking on SERPs.

Now, when you have some overview of the factors that can affect your business ranking on the search engine result pages, let us quickly jump to the guide exploring the things that need to be aimed at dominating Local SEO impressions.

Invest In Mobile Friendly Website

As we are all informed that the searches made through mobile are running ahead of those made through desktop, it is very natural to require a mobile-friendly website.

Also, when Google’s core algorithm and updates are centred on the idea of mobile-first indexing, it is a huge deal to optimise your website for a more convenient mobile experience.

Before 2018, one could have thought to survive the business competition without a mobile-friendly website. Still, after March 2018, when Google shares credibility to websites based on mobile-first goals, it is almost impossible.

If you need your website to be mobile-friendly, the first thing you need to do is take advantage of SEO tools to help you know about your website’s mobile-friendliness.

Relaunch Your Website For the Mobile-First Experience
Relaunch Your Website For the Mobile-First Experience

Moreover, a friendly mobile website should have a perfect user interface that runs on any screen and operating system. The content should be easy to read with no ads blocking the content, and it could be easily achieved using advanced techniques like accelerated mobile pages.

Also, your website should feature easy to click links that are placed at a reasonable distance for easy clicks without zooming the page.

Optimize Google My Business Page

As we have already had a word about the importance of GMB, it is essential to have a filled GMB page. This must start with selecting relevant business category followed by all other essential details of the business.

A perfect GMB should offer business description, working hours, days, business name, website URL, address, and contact details from the local area of operation. Check here a complete guide on how to optimize your GMB page.

Once you are done claiming the GMB page, the next thing you need to focus on is keeping the page with pictures.

Moreover, the GMB should ensure NAP consistency, where every single location of your business should have a separate GMB page featuring the services.

Produce Local Oriented Content

“Content is A king”, is an ancient saying that most digital marketing experts and Local SEO Services Company used to aim. Every single word on your content justifies your business relevancy before the search engines as well as users.

Therefore, it is essential that you should always try to focus on local content, which is unique and different from competitors when you are on your way to implementing a progressive SEO strategy.

How to create great curated content
How to create great curated content

Some of the essential things you must keep in mind while working on the Local Content are avoiding the use of duplicate content. Every page should have its very own and unique content that should lie between 500 to 1000 words.

It would be best to include longtail local-oriented keywords while describing your services and products for more accuracy.

Moreover, you can add testimonials from your past customers and clients to make your page more attractive for search engines and users with the use of simple and readable language.

Take the Benefit of Google Maps

The next important factor you need to aim for while strengthening your SEO game for the local area is to target the maps. It is one of the best ways to target the audience who work on interactive ideas like maps to find a particular business.

When you embed google maps on your website, it will help users in your area to reach your website easily.

So, if you are looking forward to updating your website using the maps, you can embed a map on your contact us page. In case you are delivering your services to multiple locations, make sure you embed a different map on each landing page of your website.

However, you have to ensure that your contact details, address and other details like email must be easy to locate without any need for much scrolling.

Optimize Meta and Header Tags

Meta tags and header tags help the audience and search engines to know about your services. Moreover, your page’s meta description is a small window to your array of services that are featured on the web.

When you have completely optimized meta tags and header tags on your website, it gives a much clearer idea of your service to anyone who visits or crawls through your website.

  • For Meta Tags: make sure you start with unique titles for each page using significant keywords, limiting them under 60 characters.
  • Meta Description: meta description helps users know what they will find on your site and therefore, you should prefer to target a good length of 165 characters while creating meta using suitable keywords.
  • For Header Tags: header tags are used to improve your website’s user experience and present the content to the user in a more organized form. You can use keywords according to your priority while framing H1, H2 and H3 tags on your website.

Use of Structured Data Markup

Structured data markup is the code embedded on a website to present a piece of more relevant information. Some experts may also call it schema markup.

How to Implement Schema To Improve Your SEO [Complete Guide]
How to Implement Schema To Improve Your SEO [Complete Guide]
Structure data markup could be added to each location page to improve the relevancy. In contrast, if you have a single location page, you can still benefit from it to present the most important information.

Though it is no big deal to work on structured data markup, it can be of great help in taking relevant users to your website, adding to your conversions and click-through rate.

Use Reviews to Your Advantage  

Most of the time, when a user reaches your website, the first thing they do is read your reviews. Therefore, it is entirely on your part that your business should be listed on all the platforms for reviews.

This could include targeting Yelp, Facebook, etc. or any industry-specific website that can benefit your strategy.

How online reviews affect Local Search Engine Rankings?

Also, every single review raised for your business must be acknowledged, no matter if it is good or bad. You can reach your customers to add or submit their reviews in text or stars to add more business relevancy.

Moreover, you can apologize to the users for the bad experience and thanks to those with positive feedback for better customer grip. You can add a link on your website, which should be easy to access for new users to reach for reviews and build trust in your services.

Enforce Local Citations

Local SEO is all about NAP consistency, and it could be worked with the help of local citations. Even if you have your NAP mentioned on each page of your website, you always have the scope to outreach websites for local citations.

A great way to supercharge your local citations plan is to create a unique citation for the location of your business. Moreover, any detail related to your business should be presented similarly across all the websites.

You can always take benefit of local listing websites and directories to add your business detail. You can spend some time fixing the links which are not accurate for greater relevance.

Also, you can try to take your business to major data aggregators like Acxiom, Factual, and Neustar for better exposure.

Spend Time on Backlink Building

Last but not least, you can work on improving the domain and page authority of your website with the use of a quality backlink strategy. For the initial stage, you can start by outreaching some local blog to collaborate with your business for links. Moreover, you can try to connect with some other business or website which share relevance with your services.

How to build backlinks for local business
How to build backlinks for local business

Also, you can be a part of the local business association to get featured on their website, or you can try to get sometimes attending local events that can give you the perfect exposure.

However, you can also try to invest by sponsoring some local events and building better relations with local media agencies for press releases related to your business.

Local SEO Guide – Conclusion

If you search for some great local SEO tricks and tactics that can help you gain relevant business exposure to reach the potential audience, you must aim for progressive on the page and off-page techniques listed above.

Though the design of your website and its performance are some metrics that can affect the SEO game and your position on SERPs, a well-framed SEO plan could do wonders in taking your business to new heights.

All the best!!

P.S. Don’t forget Bing. Check our tutorial on how you can add and verify your business in Bing Places for Business.

DanielS

Daniel is the founder of MediaDigi digital agency and digital marketing manager at Monetize.info. For over 14 years he has helped hundreds of customers to establish a presence online and win the digital race.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. StephanJ

    Awesome article, Ravi. Congrats for all the dedication in creating this local seo guide. Keep up the good work.

    1. Ravi Sharma

      Thanks Stephan. I look forward to share more as we learn in our agency as a team.

  2. Connie M. Nguyen

    Hi Ravi, awesome post about the SEO. I have been looking forward to this kind of good post where I can learn something new. Hope to see more post like this. Best of luck.

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